


Girl Crush

by yikesola



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2009, Early Days, M/M, POV Second Person, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:07:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23192161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yikesola/pseuds/yikesola
Summary: They’ve been together for ages. She knows Dan, really knows him. More than you can after only a few months of chatting online, that’s for sure.A fic about perceptions and obsessions.
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 18
Kudos: 61
Collections: phandomficfests: escape from reality





	Girl Crush

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [phandomficfests](http://phandomficfests.tumblr.com/) Escape from Reality event! Prompt: 1st or 2nd person POV  
> Vibes provided by [ Harry Style's "Girl Crush" cover](http://yikesola.tumblr.com/post/612884337192566784/yes-i-do-only-know-two-harry-styles-songs)

You know better than to look at her pictures for too long. But you do anyway. Every time you have a guilty wank to the thought of Dan’s pretty face, pretty chest, pretty hips, you click over to her Facebook and wallow in all the many ways you two are different. 

You look at her lips and know that Dan has tasted them. You look at her long hair and know that Dan has run his fingers through it. 

Dan doesn’t know your taste. He’s never threaded his fingers near your scalp. You have to remind yourself before you get carried away with daydreams that it’s likely he never will. 

*

You’ve never been this obsessed with a girl. It was one of the tip offs you were gay. If anyone pointed it out to you, you’d argue a healthy obsession with _Buffy_ and, by extension, Sarah Michelle Gellar. But no one will point it out to you, no one will call you out on your shit. Because no one knows about this habit of hearing Dan laugh for hours on Skype then switching to her profile after you’ve hung up to comb through every example of her face you can access. No one knows what’s running through your mind when you see her smiling eyes, her arms around Dan’s neck— why her? Why not _you_?

It’s not even that you think you’re all that great. You don’t obsess over Dan’s girlfriend with the idea that you’d be better for him, that she’s all wrong, that she’s evil and he’s miserable and you’re the one to save the day. 

That’s not it at all. 

You just… you really fucking like Dan. You do. You tried to swallow it down for a while but it’s just the truth. You think he’s fit and he makes you laugh and a day doesn’t feel right if you don’t talk to him. He’s woven into your life now, in your pocket whenever your phone buzzes. And he isn’t yours. 

You’re not allowed to want him like that, and for once it isn’t because he’s straight. It’s because he’s unavailable. It’s because he not only isn’t yours, he’s someone else’s. 

Has been for a long time. 

They’ve been together for ages. She knows Dan, really knows him. More than you can after only a few months of chatting online, that’s for sure. 

If Dan has a shitty shift at work or his dad says something awful or it’s just a bad day for no reason at all, the best you can do is text, “ _Sorry :(_ ” 

But she’s there. She’s there in Wokingham, not hours and hours away. She can make him feel better, or at least try to. You can’t do anything. And that’s not exactly new, but now you really wish you could. 

You wish you could make Dan feel half as good as he makes you feel. You wish that warmth which floods your chest when you make Dan laugh could be bottled and sent south. You suspect she doesn’t make him laugh like that. You have no reason to, but the suspicion lingers. 

*

When they do break up, you aren’t all that surprised. By now you’ve realised how little she actually knew him. How much you were idealizing her— likely in the same way she had been idealizing him. 

But you still hate the huge swaths of country standing between you and Dan. You still hate how sad he looks on the other end of Skype and how little you can do about it. He insists he’s not sad because of the breakup. Not exactly. More the fact that breaking things off with her made a lot of things real. A lot of things, he tells you, he could pretend didn’t exist while she was around. 

“I think I’m gonna have to face some things I’ve been trying to ignore,” Dan says. He looks so scared. You wish you could hold him, but for all you know that would just make him even more scared than before.

“Yeah,” you nod. 

You hope it’s noncommittal. You hope your tone and your face and your flat words are being whatever Dan needs them to be, because you’re sure as hell not sure how to do it yourself.

“Like, maybe it’s time to get some things out of my system,” Dan laughs. “Or _into_ my system, whatever.” It’s a cutting laugh. It cuts you clean through. 

“Yeah,” you nod again. 

You don’t know if you actually stand a chance with this beautiful boy, and you feel selfish for wondering about it despite the old relationship still warm in its grave. You just know you want Dan to be happy. And you really fucking hope he could be happy with you. 

*

You check her profile again on the bus ride home from Manchester. Dan’s on his way back home and you feel the urge to pick at an old scab. It's been a while since you did this. 

She looks good, you think. Happy. You want her to be happy. 

You could never hate her. Because Dan, in his way, loved her— and you’re something mighty close to loving Dan. 

And even at the most melodramatic and hopeless of your pining— something that still feels so fresh and tender you don’t want to poke fun at yourself just yet— you didn’t hate her. You envied her, you catalogued her and what she had and thought that if only _you_ had the same then maybe Dan would look your way. And now Dan’s looking very hard and you don’t have any of those things you catalogued so carefully and she still does… maybe he’d been looking all the while. It’s hard for you to believe it right now, when everything still feels shiny and teasing and unobtainable. 

Your phone is still in your hand when it buzzes with a text.

“ _halloween can’t come soon enough_ ” Dan says. 

Your cheeks ache from all the smiling you’ve done the last three days. 

You send, “ _ditto <3_” and close out of her profile.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading— come say hi on [tumblr](http://yikesola.tumblr.com/post/612885134058864640/girl-crush) !


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